Patchwork Souls : Loose Threads
by Aetheron
Summary: An older idea that eventually became much of the basis for Magic and Mayhem.
1. Chapter 1

May '93

In an underground cavern littered with bones, a teenage boy paced in lazy circles around a dying man. It was interesting, the boy mused, that his foot still passed through the bones with nary so much as a twitch to show for it, and yet the man's wand felt solid in his hand as he twirled it idly. As the man on the ground began to convulse, the boy leaned over and grinned cheerfully, "There there Professor, It'll all be over soon. You should be happy; for once in your miserable existence you'll have accomplished something worthwhile." With a final shuddering breath, Professor Lockhart ceased to be. Tom Riddle, flesh and blood once more, began donning the student robes he'd stolen while possessing Lockhart's body. Not even the unfortunate Hufflepuff colors on the robes, the only set he'd been able to find on short notice before fleeing to the Salazar's secret chamber for his rebirth, could put a damper on his mood today. He was free of that wretched diary after five decades of nothing but darkness and dreamlike snippets of a man slowly losing his grip on reality.

A few moments later Tom was pacing back and forth on the seventh floor. He'd had a few too many close calls with being spotted for his tastes while making his way up from the second floor bathroom, but with most of the students and teachers in the great hal for lunch, he'd needed only to avoid the stragglers and Filch's thrice damned cat. "I need the room of lost things," Tom chanted quietly while pacing, repeating it until on the third repetition the doorway to Hogwarts' lost and found appeared.

Once inside, Tom finally relaxed after willing the door to seal behind him and watching it fade from view. No longer risking discovery by his former professor turned meddlesome headmaster, Tom assessed his surroundings. Little had changed in the 50 odd years since his last visit here it seemed, even fifty years of junk being added to the various piles made little different when the piles themselves were made up of near a millennia's discarded items.

A few quick summoning charms later had a small pile of assorted coins in front of Tom, but Tom was far more distracted by the unusual feeling coming from his magic flowing through him. The smooth flow of magic into his wand was absent, replaced by a feeling not unlike water flowing through a much kinked hose. The coins had arrived, but while some had come flying through the air to land at his feet as he had willed them to do, just as many had rolled slowly along the floor, barely making it to the pile. Muttering profanities about reverting to being a firstie all over again, Tom debated trying to sort through the piles by hand before deciding against it due to time constraints. Scooping up the money he had managed to summon, and nabbing the first serviceable moleskin pouch he saw on the piles, he focused his will on "I need to exit the room near the DADA professor's office" and stepped through the door into an empty hallway.

The professor's office had the name Gilderoy Octavius Lockhart embossed on it in large gold lettering "Really now, don't you think this may have been a tad excessive? And seriously, your password is smile for the cameras?" Even having plucked the password directly from the professor's mind during his brief possession, Tom was still a little surprised when the door swung open. "Good riddance," Tom quickly started shoving everything into Lockhart's luggage, for the first time thankful that his former host's magical skills hadn't been up to snuff. After the summoning charms had pushed him to near exhaustion, Tom was fairly certain he'd have blacked out long before he finished packing if the professor hadn't seen the need to ensure all his important belongings could auto-pack themselves. "Perhaps you've felt the need to make a quick getaway before Lockhart?" Tom mused. Shrinking and pocketing the trunk, Tom risked a quick glamour charm, His world darkened at the edges slightly for a moment and he caught his breath leaning against the fireplace. "I really need to work on that," he shook his head to clear it, "Leaky Cauldron." Tom vanished into the green flames.

June '93

Sitting at a table in Heathrow airport a few weeks later, Tom reviewed his notes about the various things he had missed out on while stuck in the diary. That airplanes were now a common mode of travel would certainly make his life easier, but the sheer volume of changes in everyday life would make blending in as a local nearly impossible. Tom snorted at that thought, recalling the somewhat embarrassing conversation he'd had with the periodicals librarian when he asked to see their newspaper archives only to be shown a room full of film canisters.

His best bet he'd concluded would be to 'migrate' over from somewhere like the States, or Australia, so he could pass off any cultural mistakes as the problems of an immigrant. That the United States had managed to supplant Britain as the world power while he slept both tickled and rankled him. Who was he, Tom mused, to judge something for wanting to remake themselves into a world power? But did it really have to be the colonials?

In the end, his own feelings on the topic had proved moot. The plan he'd hatched during his brief discussions with his youngest brother only gave him so much to work with. The Evans family tree didn't branch much until you went back a number of generations, and the son that had left Britain went to the States, so that was where the plane ticket in Tom's hand listed his destination, an airport called LAX. What it was lax about Tom wasn't entirely sure. The confunded ticket sales lady hadn't been able to explain either once the charm had taken hold, Tom was, he'd admit, a touch disappointed that he'd had to confund her at all, but he had been rather short on the kind of identification papers she'd been insisting on.

As the loudspeakers announced that his flight was starting to board, Tom collected his papers and palmed his wand. One final confundus charm and Tom was on the plane.

"Never again," Tom muttered as he left LAX, "If muggles were meant to fly they'd have been given the ability to use broomsticks." Entirely too many hours spent crammed into a metal tube full of muggles had spoiled Tom's mood. He'd be taking the train from now on, or even better, apparating everywhere once he got a proper handle on his power flow issues. The drunken woman that had sat next to him would never know that only those same power issues had saved her from being blasted with dark green light. Well, that and Tom's rather justified fear of magically inducing a catastrophic system failure mid-flight.

Instead he'd settled for staring out the plane windows and daydreaming about the conversations he'd had with his brother's friends while stuck in the diary. It had all started with one Ginevra Weasley's story about her brothers and a flying car. At the time he hadn't even known that the boy she was describing was one of his brothers. It made sense in a way Tom supposed. He could remember the creation of all his brothers. The first time was indistinct; Tom was still largely incoherent when it was created. He knew there was a ring of some sort involved. But that was all he really remembered. Then there was the diadem, he could recognize that from the replica of the statue of Rowena at Hogwarts. He imagined his elder self finally got the ghost of Rowena's daughter to admit where she hid it. The others he could remember even clearer.

'46

Tom woke from his trance with a start as pain wracked through his being. He'd been dreaming of his other self again. As frustrating as it was being a powerless observer, watching as the now slightly older Tom Riddle graduated and made his way out into the world, it was still preferable to being stuck here in the void. With no body to tire, no day or night to pass, and no ability to interact with the world around him, Tom's only indicator of the passage of time became the slowly aging face seen in mirrors during the dreams. As dreams often do, their details got fuzzy after they concluded, but they seemed to come at moments when his counterpart in the real world felt strong emotions, be it anger or excitement, or... well, now that Tom pondered that it seemed that his other self rarely felt anything more varied than that. Or perhaps, if his other self did ever feel joy or sadness, it didn't reach the levels that induced the dream visions.

Some short time ago, Tom had watched from behind the eyes of his elder self, as he found the ornate goblet in some older Lady's collection of heirlooms. Tom could only assume that the family crest of Helga Hufflepuff he'd seen on the cup had proven legitimate, as he'd just dreamed of the woman's murder and a the completion of the ritual that had given birth to himself as a separate being. Tom wondered idly if this meant he now had a new brother of sorts, another piece of Lord Voldemort's soul torn asunder and trapped the cup. Nothing for it, he supposed, as he had no way to confirm the ritual's success or failure as the pain tore him from the visions. He had vague impression that this had happened before, perhaps during his first years when his mind was less focused, still reeling from the shock of separation from his body and soul.

Tom returned to attempting and failing to break up the monotony of his existence as best he could while awaiting the next snippet of _his _life. '_Eight million, seven hundred twenty-three thousand, forty-two bottles of beer on the wall... Eight million, seven..._

'48

Pain once again coursed through his entire being, though for all that it still felt like his entire being was being rent asunder, it somehow hurt less than the previous times. Another murder, this time of some muggle girl, caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time, and a new brother born of ritual, a locket belonging to Salazar Slytherin now housed a part of Tom Riddle. Tom had watched as his counterpart confirmed the link to their illustrious ancestor, smug in the knowledge that he had been right not once, but twice, while viewing that woman... something Smith maybe? Tom couldn't remember for sure, just that his older self had murdered her for the goblet and locket some time ago. _Seven million three hundred and seven bottles of beer on the wall..._

'81

Where previously they had hurt less and less, Tom's newest brother scattered his ability to think for days. Tom recalled a woman with red hair staring at his older self, insisting that he kill her and not her son. Tom thought it amusing at the time, like his older self wouldn't just kill them both and be done with it. But he hadn't... not at first, he'd told her to stand aside. Why would he do that? Whatever the reason was, it clearly wasn't important enough, as his older self grew impatient an killed the naive woman mere seconds later when she wouldn't stand aside. Then there was a baby, his older self spoke the killing curse, and the world went white.

June '93

Tom was brought back from his musings to the present by the announcement that the plane would be landing soon. Ginevra's tale of a boy imprisoned in his own house had prompted Tom to spend the next months dredging her mind for information on the boy-who-lived. What he'd found had led him here, but he had much work to do before he could engage in idle fancy.

July '93

Knocking on the door of an apartment in what the Americans called a high rise; Tom plastered a smile on his face. "Good Morning, are you Mr. and Mrs. Evans?" he asked the muggle couple that answered the door, "... Mr. Evans your sister put a child up for adoption a number of years ago? I think I might be your nephew." Tom began weaving the tale he'd spent the past month fabricating records for. Lockhart's singular gift with memory charms and obliviations, and the detailed notes on the same, helped considerably when dealing with muggle bureaucracy.


	2. Chapter 2

Tom walked into the Leaky Cauldron slowly; trying to ignore his stomach's protests over the knight bus's enthusiastic driving. Sliding his school bag off his shoulder, Tom stopped and stared at the scrawny kid perched on one of the barstools for a moment before rubbing his face and letting out an aggrieved sigh. Setting himself down on the next stool, "You have got to be kidding me midget, I spend all day traipsing about in muggle suburbs and here you are sitting having dinner at the Inn I'm staying at. Saint Murphy's own luck we have cousin."

Harry Potter looked up from his soup at the disheveled looking teenager that had claimed the seat next to him. A pair of green eyes that he normally only saw in a mirror looked back at him, "...what?"

Tom kept his expression carefully schooled as Harry's mind broadcast his every thought, it was good to know that the colored contacts had paid off, but now was not the time to gloat. "Saint Murphy. Patron saint of everything that goes sideways unexpectedly," the boy shrugged before waving down the barkeep. "Hey Tom, soup looks good, think I'll have some myself." Glancing back at Harry, Tom grimaced, "Swallow cousin, and_ then_ do your fish impression."

Harry snapped his mouth shut, swallowed his soup, "Who're you?"

Tom stuck out his hand, "Oh! Right, Tom Evans, third cousin on your mother's side... I think? The such and such removed bits always give me trouble... Your great, great, grandfather and my great grandfather had a rather acute case of being the same person. That or they shared a disturbing number of identifiers. Name, date of birth, yadda yadda, hunting down family across a squibbing-out isn't an exact science. And grandpa's decision to migrate to the States didn't exactly help with the record keeping." It was even technically true, albeit in reverse. Tom had started with the Evans' family tree and gone looking for a branch that migrated away.

Harry shook his hand somewhat dazedly, He was used to following Hermione's lectures about homework, but still thought he only understood half of that. "What?"

Tom quirked up and eyebrow, "Sorry, kind of unloaded a bit there. Dealing with your Aunt Horseface and then riding that cursed bus has me about frazzled. Which part lost you? And I see we're still imitating fish. Thank you Tom," Tom paid the barkeep for his soup and then turned back to Harry who'd managed to close his mouth in the interim.

"Aunt Horseface? You mean Aunt Petunia?"

"Was that her name? I think I'll stick with Horseface, or The Harridan," Tom rummaged around in his bag pulling out some paperwork. "Anyway, we're both shot of her now, so I can't see it mattering." He slid the paperwork over to Harry, "She signed over custody readily enough. Funny that, seems she thinks you blew up her sister in law, called you a menace."

"I'm not a menace... she's a... wait, custody? What?" Harry stared at the legal documents on the bar in front of him.

"Yup, as of about an hour ago, you're my ward. I had planned to talk to you about it, but having met Aunty Horseface and her whale of a husband, and seeing as you'd run away from home I figured you'd be alright with it. Can't have been much of a home life if they're willing to sign over custody to a complete stranger... though horseface did seem rather hung up on the whole related on your mom's side of the family detail at first. Something about a bumbling door? Idea what's up with that? Is she touched in the head or is it some weird British muggle slang I'm not familiar with?" Tom asked, carefully suppressing the urge to smirk at the thought of having pulled one over on the great and powerful Dumbledore. Harry had been mumbling something while Tom spoke, but Tom was distracted by a strange tingling sensation that washed over his magical senses. "What was that Harry? Speak up."

"I said, it's not my home. They magic and they hate me," Harry's grip on his drink turning his knuckles white. "I never want to go back there. I don't have to do I?"

Taking a risk about what the strange sensation had meant given Harry's declaration, Tom reached over to muss his hair. When his hand didn't burst into flames from the blood protections he smiled, "no Harry, I don't expect you'll ever see them again. Unless you want to practice your hexes on them, that's what the paperwork I handed you is for. I do however have to drop off a copy at the Ministry before it's all official. You're going to need to sign here, here, and here before I can do that" Tom tapped the paperwork at the appropriate places and handed harry a quill.

"Now, I take it you've been staying here since your jailbreak?" At Harry's nod, Tom stood up and waved down the barkeep. "Mind if we use your floo? We've got some paperwork to drop off at the ministry."

"Well... The minister was pretty clear about Harry needing to stay here in the alley until September first. Not supposed to let him wander off Mr. Evans." The barkeep looked at Tom suspiciously.

"Ah... well then, if the minister of magic himself trusts you to watch him, I suppose I can let him stick around here in your care? You'll make sure he doesn't run off and get himself into any more trouble? I'll be back within the hour." Once the barkeep agreed, Tom started towards the floo, marveling at the absurdity of wizarding logic that left a thirteen year old boy staying in a tavern on his own. Then again, Harry was muggle raised and had only questioned him on maybe a third of the details he had flung out there.

"Department of Child Services and Welfare," intoned the voice of the lift Tom was riding as the doors opened.

"Hullo there Cindy, fancy seeing you here," he greeted the department secretary for the third time this week, "they _do_ let you go home occasionally I hope?"

"Hello Tom, miss me already? Didn't you just pick up some paperwork this morning?"

"I did indeed, and would you look at that, it's all filled out and in need of a proper filing already." Tom handed over the now signed custody transfer forms. "It seems my cousin's current guardians agreed with me that he ought to be raised in our world, rather vehemently in fact. I'm rather concerned about just how easy it was to convince them. I may have to take my cousin to St. Mungo's once the paperwork clears just for my own peace of mind."

"You don't think they..." Cindy's words died as she glanced down at the paperwork in her hands, her eyes bulging slightly.

"I don't know. But they made no secret of the fact that they 'didn't approve of our kind' as they put it. And I'm no expert, but surely not even a young teenager needs to have bars on the windows and 6 locks on the door to keep them out of trouble. Locks that were installed on the outside to keep himin mind you. And that's not even taking into account the implications of a matching set of locks on a cupboard." Tom waited for the outburst he knew was coming. He'd memorized Cindy's schedule so that he'd be able to drop the paperwork during her shift. Her past experiences with such behavior had made the papers whose archives Tom had devoured in order to catch up on current events. A month of flirting with the girl, learning to read her triggers, was hopefully about to bear fruit.

"HARRY POTTER! Your cousin is Harry Potter!? ... Are you telling me... that _HARRY POTTER_ is being abused!?" she hissed angrily.

Remembering to look sad and troubled instead of victoriously smug, Tom started adding fuel to the fire. "It sadly seems so; I won't know for sure just how bad it was until I have custody and can get him to a healer, but... what kind of child looks like Christmas came early when they're told that they don't have to go home again?" Leaning in conspiratorially, "The worst of it is that I think someone _knew. _Andlet it_ continue," _Tom matched her outraged hiss of a whisper, "seeing as this department's mandatory visits _never happened! _Howdoes an entire department forget to check on the most famous orphan in decades?"

Cindy's anger turned to confusion, "We wouldn't... We couldn't... "

"Unless someone in the department or high up in the ministry sealed his files. Or blocked the visits, or fabricated the reports, or... You see where this is going?"

"But that would mean..."

"That Harry needs you to make sure that this paperwork, gets signed off on and filed with no one the wiser, or he'll end up back in that prison he was forced to call a home." Word choice was everything when trying to lead people to the right conclusion, quoting Cindy's own description of her home life may have been distasteful, but it was effective. Tom didn't need to be a dab legilimens to read Cindy's resolve to help Harry out of what she was now picturing as a situation as bad as her own childhood. "We children of broken homes have to look out for one another." Cindy nodded distractedly as started shuffling the custody papers into a larger pile, before squaring her shoulders and heading into her boss's office.

Chuckling lightly to himself, Tom headed back to the lifts. Who needs the imperious curse when you can convince people to help you of their own free will?

Stepping out of the floo back into the Leaky cauldron, Tom was greeted by an unfortunate sight. A veritable swarm of redheaded children were clustered around Harry, all talking at once while nothing but a light buzzing noise escaped the circle. What caught Tom's attention, however, as the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end and he cursed mentally, was that Albus Dumbledore was staring straight at him with a bemused expression. Pushing his mental shields to full power, Tom donned an annoyed expression and strode forward into the boundary of the privacy charm, and with his best attempt at a mid-western accent, "Mama told me it's rude to stare sir. Can I help you?" Internally Tom was cursing his thrice damned luck; He had hoped to avoid Dumbledore all together, leastwise until the paperwork cleared and everything was a done deal.

"Terribly sorry my dear boy, you seemed familiar at first. Do forgive an old man seeing the past in the present." Dumbledore shook his head, and Tom relaxed a bit, thanking Merlin that he'd opted to use muggle methods to alter his appearance as he watched Dumbledore's expression clear.

Tom found himself under scrutiny again a second later and had to plaster a smile to his face when Harry noticed his arrival, "Hey Tom, everything okay?"

Tom had to suppress a wince, in retrospect using his birth name suddenly seemed like much less of a good idea with Dumbledore in the room. "You betcha, but it might take a bit" Tom tried to stall, "what'd I miss? You seem to be hosting a convention."

"Oh these are the Weasleys, Ron's my best mate, and that's Professor Dumbledore, and-" Harry was cut off by said professor clearing his throat.

"My boy, Tom was it?" Yup, Tom decided, definitely not my best idea. "I'm afraid we're discussing a private matter, and I must insist that you give us some space so that we may... What's this?" Albus was himself interrupted by the arrival of a pair of owls with letters bearing the ministry official seal. One letter was dropped in front of Albus, and the other in front of Tom.

Opening the letter in front of him, "If I'm not mistaken, Professor Dumbledore, this letter is..." Tom quickly skimmed the legalese on the front page. "...Yes, it seems that any private discussions you plan to have with my cousin will now have to include me as his legal guardian." Thank you Cindy, for your perfect timing, that's three months of work that I can only now say meant anything. Taking advantage of the stunned silence, Tom turned to Harry, "No more Aunt Horseface!" That they said it in unison left them both laughing along with a few of the Weasley children who had met Petunia.


	3. Chapter 3

Although the healer woman was still talking, Tom was no longer listening. Tom was happily pondering the merits of various methods of murder. He'd known about the broken arm already, and it was pretty hard to miss the scars on Harry's back from his uncle's belt, but the healer's list of minor injuries that clearly hadn't healed right was still ongoing. Even ignoring that he didn't have the magical strength presently to cast a proper cruciatus curse, muggles had an annoying tendency to crack far too quickly under its caress. His violent musing was brought to an end as the healer stopped talking, looking like she was waiting on him to respond.

Tom signed off on the paperwork the healers had handed him. Pausing briefly to acknowledge their apologies that they couldn't make any sense of the lingering darkness behind his brother's lightning bolt scar, of course they would choose to focus on that. A quick glance down at Harry's expression confirmed they were in agreement about the further testing the healers wanted to do on it. Harry was clearly done with being on display, and Tom had no interest in them discovering the source of their brotherhood. "I do apologize miss," a glance at her nametag, "Abbott, but I'm having a specialist look into that. At this point I think Harry would like to get home." After Tom and Harry both regurgitated the directions for the potions regiment that the healers had Harry on now, they made their escape.

"And I thought Madame Pomfrey was insistent. I felt like a lab rat." Harry grumbled as they headed towards the hospitals floos. "And what was that about a specialist?"

"Well, you aren't wrong Harry, but you don't have to worry. I think you've had enough time in the lab for now. But, you'll remember this the next time I ask how you feel won't you? If you tell me you're 'fine' while looking like death warmed over, you get the healers sicced on you again." Tom laughed at the expression on Harry's face. "Oi! Just because candle wicks of an aunt and uncle were useless lumps who didn't take care of you doesn't mean we're going to let the rest of the world get away with the same."

"I was fine! The healer lady just said... wait... candle wicks?" indignation turning to distracted confusion.

"You're right Harry; they _would_ burn rather nicely wouldn't they?"Tom grinned.

"Tom... you're weird." Harry lost the fight with his own grin for a moment before his expression turned serious, "You know you can't actually do that right? They'd throw you in jail."

"You would think so wouldn't you. Ah youth, I do miss the naivety some times."

"Hey! You're not _that_ much older than I am, and what do you mean naivety?" Harry played the part of a petulant child remarkably well.

"Do you really think the Wizengamot would convict me, a wizard, for murdering the muggles who dared harm their precious savior? I could hire a trained monkey as my defense lawyer and get off with nothing more than a slap on the wrist and a small fine." Showing the copies of the paperwork the healers had given him to Harry, "It's all in here, but unfortunately no, I won't be setting them on fire any time soon, as I imagine you'd rather _not _ have all this broadcast to the general public." Taking Harry's grimace as confirmation, "Thought so."

"Even if you could get away with it, it wouldn't make it right. It would be like something that," Harry's expression darkened, "Malfoy would do."

"Malfoy," a raised eyebrow, "And just what does your cousin have to do with this?"

"Cousin!?"

"Of course. All you British wizarding folks are related doncha know," Tom smiled.

Harry relaxed, "Oh, you were joking. That's not funny Tom."

"I was making fun, but Malfoy really is your cousin. Second cousins, once removed, I think, on your father's side. His mum and your grandmother were both Blacks.

Harry shuddered, but his expression turned thoughtful, "As in Sirius Black? The guy the papers say escaped Azkaban?"

"Yup, another one of your relatives to be sure," Tom laughed at the pained expression on his little brother's face, "What, you thought that being a half-blood would get you out of inbred gits club? Hardly, you're related, albeit only on one side of the family instead of both, to most of your schoolmates. Look on the bright side midget, those Weasleys you seem so fond of are your cousins too, if another generation distant, also through the Blacks."

"So the Weasleys really are family?... and don't call me midget"

"Sorry midget, you must be at least this tall to lodge complaints," Tom held out his hand a few inches above Harry's head. "Maybe if you take your potions, don't make that face at me they're good for you, If you take your potions maybe you'll grow out of midget status. Maybe. Stranger things have happened right?"

Rather than dignify Tom's commentary on his height with a proper response, Harry just stuck his tongue out and tossed the floo powder into the fire, "Diagon Alley."

"Cheeky blighter," Tom followed.


End file.
